Chapter XXIII: The Letter

As Craig looked at himself in the long mirror of his own room in the Ritz-Astor, that evening, there was no vanity in him, but he was satisfied with the appearance that he made. Any man would have been. He was the figure of a man to stir the admiration of men as much as of women--tall, supple, narrow-waisted, broad and flat as to the shoulders.

He had dined in his room, at Courtney’s suggestion. He glanced at the small electric clock on the mantel. Eight thirty. Time for the meeting in suite No. 53.

Craig had the comfortable feeling that neither did Courtney find anything amiss with his appearance. Courtney was just a bit relieved, perhaps. The district attorney was frankly surprised. He was an elderly man, nervous and alert, and was also groomed to perfection. His gray hair was curly and parted in the middle, the smooth waves of it giving a rather effeminate air to his shaven face. Also, his voice had a prettiness of accent and intonation that would have been reckoned effeminate perhaps--except by those who knew his record or had heard him in court.

“Mr. Craig, Colonel Bird.”

The two shook hands.

“Mr. Craig,” said the colonel, without loss of time, “Mr. Courtney has told me about you. I dare say things will turn out nicely. Has he told you about political conditions here in the county? No? Well, it will require but a word. I happen to have the honor to be the candidate again of the coalition. You’ve heard about that. No? Well, I detest the word, but it will perhaps make it clearer to you when I call them the Reformers--the better elements. How about it, Courtney?”

“Right! That’s why I’m backing you.”

“Thank you, sir. And opposed to me I have the other part of the community, particularly the criminal elements, both little and big--and with excellent reason. Am I overstating it, Courtney?”

“Not at all, colonel; not at all.”

“And, as occasionally happens in even the best of communities, I have established, in my own mind, that the police and the crooks are again in collusion. You will understand, sir, that I have devoted a large part of my life to fighting corruption. If I err, Courtney, I’ll be grateful if you set me right.”

“You haven’t erred yet, colonel.”

“The point is, as I take it, to establish this collusion in such a striking way that the great masses of citizens--I detest the term, but the proletariat, let us say--the great majority of whom are always honest, will be impressed. Nothing does impress them unless it is hammered into their skulls. I do not wish to exaggerate, but they must see that this collusion actually and as a matter of fact does exist.”

“Yes, sir,” said Craig.

“You are pledged, I apprehend, to the taking of certain well-known and notorious offenders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In that case, it is one of my prerogatives to assist you in every way I can. Let us suppose that you were to assemble these offenders in a certain place, at a certain time, when they will have had reason to believe that they had bought immunity from the police--not all the police, mind you, the great majority of whom are always honest--but the principals. I believe there are such, Courtney.”

“You said it, colonel.”

“Then, let us suppose that my men should accomplish the arrest without the cognizance of the police, and that this should occur just about a week before election.”

“Two weeks,” said Courtney.

“Two weeks,” amended the colonel. “But, of course, the criminals arrested should have to be of a certain eminence, a certain notoriety.”

“How would Leamy do?” asked Craig.

“Excellent!”

“And Trick O’Ray, the safe blower?”

“Excellent! Most excellent!”

“Then, Count Wolf?”

“Really! Really! Courtney, is this possible?”

“Worth trying, colonel. It’s got to be big, or we can’t win with even you on the ticket--not even with your record!”

“And Ben Jarvis,” said Craig. “I think that I can get him, also. I understand that he’s hiding out here in town, somewhere.”

“Ben!” exclaimed the colonel with warmth. “He was one of the first men I ever sent to prison.”

“I hope to do most of this myself,” said Craig. “It’s a personal debt. But I may need the help of your office and of Mr. Courtney’s paper in getting a line on various friends and past performances of the men we’re after.”

After Craig said good night to his rich and powerful friends a little later he dared let his thought go, almost for the first time, openly and without apology, to Joan Gracie.

He had returned to his room.

He thoughtfully undressed. He pulled on a bathrobe. His eye rested on a writing desk. Paper, pen, and ink silently approved his longing, bade him to write to her. He seated himself at the desk.

* * * * *

When Joan Gracie received the letter that Craig had written her, she was in an instant tremor.

She read his letter twice:

DEAR JOAN:

I think about you very often. It gives me strength. I want
all the strength in the world, and I’ll have it, too. The
red ledger is not a debt. It’s an asset. But I am fixing
to pay off the debt in it, and become rich, and powerful
and great, to justify your faith in me. Think of it! I am
Daniel Craig again. I have a beautiful room here in the
great and palatial Ritz-Astor. And I have friends whose
faith also I’ll justify in justifying yours. It’s not in
any ordinary way, and I know you will understand how I mean
it, when I sign myself,

Yours truly,
DANIEL CRAIG.

The queer thing was that she did understand. She understood in all the ramifications of the word. Had she been Craig’s mother she could not have understood better, nor if she had been Craig himself.

She had been sitting on the porch of her home in Fairhaven. Heavily screened with vines, it had the seclusion of a room, and she wasn’t expecting callers. She certainly wasn’t expecting the caller who came.

It was Gary Lee. Gary had, or thought he had, sufficiently quenched the burning in his bosom to come and see Joan again. He wasn’t going to apologize to her. Not that. On the other hand, it was absurd that a mere convict could come between him and her. And, well--there went that glow of heat in his breast again, as if he were jealous, as if it were imaginable that Joan could possibly prefer a convict to the only son of the Lees.

But, about a minute before Gary arrived, Aunt Katherine, who had continued to live with Joan ever since the riot, while a gardener cared for her flowers, called to Joan for some small service or other, and Joan had bounced to obey. She wasn’t there when Gary came up to the porch, but the disorder she had left was eloquent of her recent presence and of her certain return.

Gary, perfectly at home, strolled toward the hammock. He was going to stretch himself out in the hammock, light his pipe, and then, when he heard Joan come, pretend that he was asleep. There’d be a laugh when she saw him--no awkward embarrassment.

But there were a couple of letters in the hammock, tossed there, ready for mailing.

Gary picked them up. He was as innocent as a new-born babe. By sheer accident, or some devil inspiration, and still without thought of evil, his eye fell on the address:

DANIEL CRAIG, ESQ.

He gasped.

Then the Maltese terrier began to bark, and he heard Joan coming. He had time to drop the letter back to the hammock, but not time to readjust his expression, let alone to escape. The flame was in his heart. The heat of it was in his face.

Joan saw that something was up instantly. She had been glad to see him. Now she stopped short.

“Well?” she said.

There was no use bluffing. Anyway, that was foreign to their natures, especially in their own relationship.

“I saw your letter by accident,” said Gary.

“That’s all right, Gary.” She had an urge to consolation. “Sit down.”

Gary sat down. He wanted to master himself, but his desire to protest was the greater.

“Writing to him?” he said.

“Yes.”

“‘Daniel Craig, Esquire!’”

“If you’ve come here to quarrel with me----”

“I came here to call--make up--ask you to take a spin, and I find----”

He stopped. His voice was getting husky. He was trembling with rage. Joan felt sorry for him. Her family and his had been friends. He and she had been playmates. His temper was a disease. She tried to reason with him.

“Gary, you have everything in the world--a good name, a good family, wealth, a fine brain----”

“Bah!”

“Every one says so. Don’t you think it would be the nice thing, and the noble thing, to be a little charitable?”

“Pleading for him, are you?”

“I’m pleading for you,” she said gently.

“I need it more than he does.”

“You’re here. You’re hurt.”

“I know I’m hurt. I’ll admit it. You know I can’t tolerate this--this felon intruding himself into your life. You don’t care. You encourage him.”

“I want to encourage him,” said Joan steadily, “but not the way you mean.”

“What, in Heaven’s name, is your father thinking about?”

“He himself is now convinced that Craig was never guilty of the crime for which he was punished.”

“You persuaded him.”

Joan slowly shook her head. “There’s a man in San Pedro now who heard a boy in Chicago tell about the shooting--a boy who takes drugs. The boy says he himself shot the man Beekman.”

“This letter writing, I mean. What does your father think of that?”

“He doesn’t know anything about it.”

“He doesn’t?”

“For two reasons. He’s always trusted me in such matters. And this is the first letter I’ve written.”

“Then tear it up.”

“No.”

“Tear it up! Joan, tear it up!”

“Gary, you’re unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable! I love you. I’m going to make you marry me. I find you writing to an outlaw, an escaped convict--dazzled by his fame, Napoleon of the Underworld! Bah! And I tell you--you call me unreasonable----”

He hadn’t been speaking very loudly, but he had gradually been letting his passion get the better of him. He went incoherent. His voice was strangled. He seized the letter from the hammock and lacerated it with his fists.

It was all up, all over. There was never going to be a marriage of Joan Gracie and Gary Lee. Knowledge of this possibly came to both of them right then and there. Perhaps neither of them, in spite of Lee’s declarations, had ever suspected before just what a large place this possibility had had in their lives. It had been a mountain in the mental landscapes of both of them, even in Joan’s. Now the mountain was gone.

The surprising discovery was not a signal for fresh passion, not of emotion, even. The resultant coldness between them, as they stood there and faced each other on the porch, could not be called emotion. It was a vacuity; still, with that hint of an ache in it which vacuity so often entails.

“I--didn’t--mean to go so far,” said Gary.

“Sit down,” said Joan.

He reseated himself. He lit a moody cigarette. His eyes were on the floor of the porch. There was a passage of seconds before he found that he was looking at the letter he had twisted. He picked it up. He returned it to the hammock. Joan also had seated herself. She made a blind movement to pick up a bit of sewing.

Her eyes were down. He looked at her.

“You know how I feel,” he said.

She gave him a bright look. It was manifest there was no anger in her at all.

“I think I do, Gary.”

“Then what’s the trouble all about?”

“It’s because,” she hesitated, “I don’t want you to think me unjust.”

“Say it.”

“It’s because you don’t seem to know how other people feel.”

He meditated.

“We might as well beat this thing out.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve known me all your life--known my family, my family history.”

“We’ve quarreled and made up,” said Joan. “If your sister, Alice--you know how she and I loved each other even when we were mere babies--if Alice had lived, she couldn’t have taken a greater interest and pride in you than I have, Gary.”

“Yet you let this convict--that’s what he is; there’s no use in mincing matters--wreck our friendship.”

“It’s you who are wrecking it, Gary.”

“In what way?”

“By your injustice--by trying to dictate to me.”

“I won’t stand by and see you ruin yourself and your father. This fellow isn’t worth it. All the jailbirds in the country aren’t worth it. If you’re blind I’ll show you the light.”

“In what way?”

“First, by putting him back behind the bars, where he belongs.”

“And if he doesn’t belong there?”

“But he does. He broke jail. That’s a felony in itself. He compounded the felony by turning the others loose.”

“But there is evidence that he is innocent, that he should never have gone to prison.”

“That’s irrelevant. I know where he is. It’s my duty--my double duty, in the light of all that I know, and have done, to get him back.”

He got up. His anger was warming again, but this time his brain was in control.

“Gary!”

“I’m going to send a telegram.”

“Stop! You mustn’t.”

“Why?”

“In a little while--just a little while--he’ll be pardoned. And in the meantime he is trying to pay a debt.”

Gary laughed.

“There’ll be high times,” he said, “when women are running things: sentimentality for justice, intuition instead of logic.”

It was his tone more than his words that made Joan flare. All of her carefully suppressed feeling of a little while ago began to show through her reserve like little tongues of flame.

“You’re silly.”

“Am I?”

“You’re making yourself unhappy, and you’re making others unhappy. I don’t care. Do what you want to.”

“It’s just because you don’t care that I’m going to straighten this thing out.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll wire the governor. There is just about time to get the requisition papers through. Our man ought to be on his way back to San Pedro by to-morrow night.”

He picked up his hat. She blocked his way, panted into speech.

“You talk about caring. You! What a mockery it was! You, who pretended to love me, who talked of my marrying you! What a mockery it was! You!”

“I started out to say something along that line,” he said tensely, but quietly enough. “You turned me off. I offered you everything I have and am. You seem to prefer this outlaw.”

“I’m not considering him as an outlaw.”

“Perhaps you’re considering him as a friend.”

“What if I should?”

“I dare say he’d be delighted.”

“Do you want to read the letter that he wrote me?”

“No, I do not.”

“There’s nothing in it that any one might not read. You’re wronging him, Gary.”

“By heavens, Joan,” he exploded--still softly--“you’ll end by making me think that you’re in love with this brute.”

“He’s not a brute.”

“You do love him.”

“Maybe I do.”

“The daughter of Major Gracie in love with----”

“Keep quiet! Don’t talk to me! Love! You don’t know the meaning of the word. You babble it as if it were a plaything or an acre of land.”

“I loved you long enough.”

“You never did. You wanted me for yourself! You meant to take me for yourself! And you called that love!” Her voice faltered a little. She bit her lip. She turned her face away. But immediately she was facing him again, her eyes darker than usual, blue and liquid fire. “And it’s giving--not taking--that is love.”

For a moment longer they were facing each other, each of them a frail human dike to the big emotions storming back of them; or, rather, perhaps, the head of an arrow in a bent bow.

Their eyes were clashing, but neither spoke, as Gary passed the girl and descended the steps.